Is Jackie Ashley right about the departure time-table? I’ve just discovered this piece by Jackie Ashley in the Guardian today in which she makes a fairly confident assertion about the Labour succession time-table. If she’s right, and she is known to be very close to the Brown camp, then it looks as though we are heading for a Q3 departure – which has hardened in the past week to become the 0.62/1 favourite. The only problem with the bet is…
Are there votes in putting up the cost of flying? Judging by the responses this morning from the Murdoch papers, the Daily Telegraph and CONtinuityIDS the Tories have made a big strategic mistake by going so heavily on green issues in general and the air travel tax in particular. It is not often that a Tory leader launching a new policy initiative comes under so much flak from the Times and the Telegraph – two papers that in former years…
Brown – the solution or part of the problem? In the wake of the biggest ICM lead for the Tories since 1987 the former Home Secretary, Charles Clarke, has called on the young Environment Secretary, David Miliband, to run for the leadership against Gordon Brown. Whether Miliband will heed the call we do now know but there’s clearly a lot of questioning going on in the party at the moment and a group that could be influential might be the…
New poll puts Cameron’s party at 11% ahead An ICM poll for the Sunday Mirror this morning provides good news for both the Tories and the Lib Dems but bad news for Labour. The headline vote share with changes on the ICM Guardian poll nearly a fortnight ago are CON 40% (nc): LAB 29% (-2): LD 21% (+2). The main move is the 2 point switch from Labour to the Lib Dems. The 11% Labour deficit is the biggest the…
Can the man who went down to Bush help sell the Tory air tax? With the Tories planning to move into potentially dangerous territory with their green tax proposals one of the most intriguing stories this morning is the Sunday Telegraph report that David Cameron has persuaded the former Democrat nominee turned Oscar winner, Al Gore, to visit Britain next week. For the Tory tax plan which will progressively penalise people the more they fly could be very tricky to…
Are there similarities between Brown’s “inevitable” success and Hillary’s? Our chart this morning shows the changing betting price on Brown for the Labour leadership over the past month and illustrates how market sentiment has moved against the “near certainty” of the 0.19/1 best price that was available before the Guardian’s ICM February poll. The mood began moving back to the Chancellor but then in the past three days we have seen the price ease again. Is it now time to…
The Battle of Barnet Nothing showed the extent of Labour’s triumph in 1997 more clearly than the way they took one supposedly rock solid Conservative seat after another in North London, including Hendon and Finchley & Golders Green. Up until 1994, when they lost overall control, the Conservatives had dominated Barnet council, since its creation in 1964. At Parliamentary level, they had won every seat up until the 1997 earthquake. Barnet was divided into four constituencies up until 1997, and…
Will his own union not give his leadership bid its blessing? If Gordon did not look such a certainty for the Labour leadership then this latest news about unions backing could have been an enormous blow. For as the Mirror writer, Kevin Maguire, notes in a blog piece on the Mirror web-site there a real chance that the new super union made up of Amicus and the T&G might not give Brown its endorsement. This union, when the merger goes…